Tecat

Common Jobs: No universal jobs, Tecats have jobs typical of a hunter-gatherer society, Techats are capture creatures

Likes: The multiverse, Meeting "gods", Plays, Musicals, Peace, Gathering new traditions, Math, LogicDislikes: Hearing that any of their beliefs aren't true, The multiverse god of gobbling up universes with too high of a population

Attack Method: Tecats rarely attack, and when confronted will attempt to flee or bargain. If there is absolutely no escape, they will wrestle them to the ground and tie them up. Killing for anything other than food, even in self-defense is seen as a crime in tecat society. Techats, on the other hand, do not have a built-in fight or flight protocols unless it is "programmed" in.

Attributes

Common Traits

[Multitalented]Positive traitThis character knows about a lot and if the situation calls for it they are able to do many things outside of their job title with no formal education on the subject. This character will not be the best at it or particularly good but will be able to do it.

[Curious]Neutral traitThis character has a general thirst for knowledge and tends to ask a lot of questions. They are more likely to investigate anything that seems out of the ordinary.

[Defensive]Negative traitThis character may get very upset or angry if they are challenged in some way, typically when their competence at certain tasks is called into question.

Gods

Tecats have an intense belief in the gods and frequently believe that many of the people who come to visit them, and the people they meet outside of their bubble are gods. Due to this while the gods are still special to the tecats, they are less revered and more talked and written about as exciting subject matters.

Physical Description

Tecats are bipedal mammals with a mix of short and long fur. They have a light grey short fur on their arms, legs, torso, and faces. Their heads, hands, feet, and tail are covered in long hair, with a notable exception on their underhand which is short. A tecat's tail fur gets longer by the time it reaches the tail tip, forming a fanned out appearance. The long hair on the tecat's head becomes a silky mane that can be styled or cut to fit their need. While the long fur on a tecat is patternless, the shorter fur can have simple patterns in a slightly darker grey.

Tecats have bulky bodies suited for lifting heavy objects and climbing up trees. While one might assume tecats have claws, they actually lack them, instead, they use pure dexterity and strength to scale anything they need to.

The two ears tecats have are incredibly long. Tecats also have two false ears that are entirely nonfunctional. From the few papers detailing tecats before they "became trapped in the multiverse," it seemed hunter tecats had two sets of ears, while the bulker tecats of today did not need the extra set and have the non-fuctional ones seen.

Tecats faces are simple though quite flat. They have a feline-like nose, two bright eyes, two black eyebrows, and sometimes have light markings on their forehead. The eyes and the inside of both sets of ears are all an extremely bright color, either green, blue, or red. The color is random on birth if both parent tecats are a different color, and will always be the same color as the parents if they both share colors. Tecat tradition says that the land blesses those who are green, the sky blesses those who are blue, and the community around them blesses those who are red.

Personality & Traits

Excitable and creative, tecats spend their free time writing stories and making plays about the gods. They gather in grand auditoriums to put on their acts and recite poems about the gods beyond their universe. The tecats love the multiverse. They cherish it more than anything else in their lives.

The tecats believe that the 100-mile wide dome they live in is their whole universe. Should a tecat want to, they could pace from one end of their universe to the other end within a few days. They love their world, it is a paradise to them, but they love the hustle the bustle of the other universes beyond their very own just as much. A system has been put in place for them to gain the ability to travel to select "universes." When a tecat has a litter, they are allowed to give up some or all of their litter to the notails in return for tickets. Once they obtain enough tickets, they may view the "multiverse phonebook" and cash in their ticket for a visit to their chosen universe. This is in fact just a spaceship that takes them to another planet and a particular location. Examples of places in the multiverse phonebook are below.

The gift dimension: Costs a low amount of tickets. Allows the tecat to go to a toy store for five hours and obtain one toy as long as the toy is approved.

The feeding road: Costs a low amount of tickets. The tecat is taken to a perfectly average street in a major city, given points, and is free to sample alien foods for up to 4 hours. The tecat is allowed to bring food back to distribute among friends or store for later consumption.

Petland: Costs a low amount of tickets. The tecat is placed in a notail capture creature lab that has no techats in the public areas. The tecat is allowed to roam the labs and play with any approved animal for up to two days. If the tecat pays extra tickets, they are allowed to take a small and widespread non-breedable animal with them home. Ex: A monike.

The great park: Costs a medium amount of tickets. The tecat and a friend are taken to a theme park and given passes and a room in the park for three days.

Godly vacation: Cost a high amount of tickets. The tecat and a friend is taken to a resort and is allowed to roam it and the nearby city to their heart's content for up to 30 days. They are allowed to bring many souvenirs with them back as long as they are approved items.

When tecats come back from their visit, they quickly get to work on writing stories about the gods they met. To them, most of the people they meet in the "multiverse" are gods traveling for fun or on mighty quests. If a person says they're not a god they will be slightly disappointed but accept the answer, otherwise, they will accept anything the so-called god says. Anyone trying to get the tecat to their bidding will be sorely disappointed though, as the notails have informed the tecats to refuse doing the labor of the gods outside their realm due to the many hidden evil gods.

The tecats believe they are the notails are on equal standing, both mortal beings who simply frolick in the lands of the gods and the mortals who serve them. Though the tecats often find notails remarking how much they hate the gods annoying. As the notails are the ones with the "multiverse machines" they tolerate it and often consider them and the notails to be a comedic duo. As the notails are considered to be long-standing travelers of the multiverse tecats do not see anything inappropriate with listening to them and following their orders outside of their "universe" to stay safe.

All the tecats know is the multiverse. If told it doesn't exist, that they're being tricked, they will refuse to listen. They will debate or flee from the person trying to inform them of this so-called truth. They will go to other tecats and notails to reconfirm the "facts," that it is a god's attempt at humor. But should a tecat take the words of person seriously, they will become overwhelmed. Not only would their world be shattered, but their entire multiverse. Worst of all, they will not be allowed to return to their home as they could spread the truth to others.

They would be trapped, not in a dome, but in a universe that is not theirs anymore.

History

While most of tecat history has been lost or hidden, tecats were a species who had reached the beginnings of significant civilization on their planet when the notails found them. While the start of the interactions went surprisingly well, the notails soon saw something in the tecats. The notails built their dome and soon adopted tecats that were given up, putting them in the dome without the knowledge of the tecats. Once the notails had a stable population in the dome, they killed off all tecats outside of the dome and took over their planet.

The tecats in the dome had their genes edited till there were two types of tecats, the normal ones, and the techats. Instead of just taking young tecats when they needed them, the notails opened a ticket based system where the parents are given a reward for "sending their newborns out into the multiverse." What this means is their child will become a techat and sent to be a capture creature. This paired with the fact that there is a hard limit on how many tecats can be in the dome to prevent the "multiverse god of gobbling up universes" from being unleashed to thin the population means there's always a stable stream of techats for the notail's usage.

To this day tecats live quite happily in their dome, though it should be stressed that tecats do not know they're in containment. Instead, they believe the dome to be a whole universe and they are given the privilege to visit the multiverse if they gain enough tickets.

Home Planet

The tecat's real homeworld and its name have been lost to time. The homeworld listed for them, "Techverse," is a large 100-mile long dome that contains the total population of tecats. Attempts to dig too far down (approximately 400 feet deep) will lead to "the bottom of the universe", which is a tough pitch black metal. Tecats believe it to be the physical bottom of the universe. They think the same about the rest of the dome. The dome displays a day and night cycle according to the tecat's natural sleep cycle.

Inside the dome are pleasant wooded areas, fields, rivers, lakes, as well as the small towns and roads the tecats occupy. The lack of predators in the dome means the tecats live in relative peace. A resort of the "gods" exists in the dome. While tecats do not work there, and in fact are not being forced to work at all by outside species, tecats will frequently "visit the gods" at the resort. As the entirety of the dome is considered their land they do not have to pay to "mingle with the gods."

A tunnel is connected to the dome which leads to the multiverse machines, which are really spaceships. The entrance and exit are also in this area but is always closed off when the tecats are being moved to the ships.

Subspecies

Techat: A techat is a mindless version of a techat. It passively takes in knowledge but does not seem to have it's own will to do anything. They are taught languages by sitting them down in a room with a recording. Once they are ready, they are shipped out as a capture creature to P-class notails. The techat act like organic robots with the P-class having to "program" tasks into them, such as "gather wood." The P-class must detail every action to do, such as "Find wood = Walk five steps north, scan for trees, if the tree is located walk to tree, else loop." Once something has been defined the P-class can keep using it or use it in combination with other commands, such as "Gather wood = Find wood, Chop wood, Go to base, Drop Wood." If a command "crashes" a techat they will instantly fall asleep.

It is stressed to the child to make sure to test their logic before letting the techat go. For example if a chop wood command doesn't list an endpoint a techat can spend hours chopping the same piece of wood until stopped. As techats have no real mind of their own or control over their actions they are defined as a fauna, rather than a species like tecats. If a techat does something bad the punishment is on the owner, not the techat.

Huncat: Now extinct, the huncat was the form newly born tecats would become in times of low food. They were smaller, faster, and able to catch prey better than the bulky techats. Even before the notails located the techats, huncats were becoming a rarity as the techats were in the beginning stages of animal-based farming and thus newborn tecats were rarely underfed.

Special

Information Absorption: Both tecats and techats take in information remarkably well. Once their attention is on something, they will remember every detail of it. This is why tecats feel intense euphoria when visiting "other multiverses." On the flipside, due to this, they become overwhelmed if they spend a long time in the "multiverse," or are unable to return home. The euphoria they once felt will feel suffocating for months or even years as the flow of new information and concepts overwhelms them.

Trivia

• All current cases of a tecat becoming free involves someone kidnapping a tecat on a trip or one becoming accidentally lost and stumbling into a person who tells them the truth. While initially glad to be told these tecats rarely last in the universe. They become stressed out without the social interactions of other tecats and frequently are overwhelmed especially by people attempting to learn their story and report on it.

• Online polls have shown that most who read about the tecat situation consider it "strange but as long as the tecats are happy it's fine." The trivia listed above being and the fact that notails "are not forcing them to do anything" except stay in the bubble seems to be the main reasons for these thoughts.

• Trapping a whole species in a giant bubble, and setting up a "multiverse" program, seems to be a tad extreme for just the harvesting of their fauna children. Some believe that the tecats are a social experiment in seeing if entrapping and killing off a species in a roundabout way is considered fine if the species is expressed as "well kept."